The Struggles of A Queen
by Barren
Summary: Frozen fanfic. A dark conspiracy looms over the kingdom of Arendelle, and no one is quite sure just who is involved. Meanwhile, unrest in the kingdom leads Elsa to make dark decisions regarding the future stability of her kingdom...
1. Chapter 1

Silence filled every street corner as the clock struck midnight in Arendelle. It was a dark night with only stars that resembled small bright holes in an otherwise pitch-black sky and the reflection of the moonlight for illumination. A man rides a dark horse through the empty streets of the sleeping city that has already hit its curfew. He knows there isn't a soul for miles that could possibly be observing him, and it's a welcome feeling.

The autumn air has only now begun to come in the kingdom, as summer's end approaches. It is a small consolation for the blistering heat of the kingdom's days, he thinks to himself, turning past another candle-lit lamppost and going down yet another alleyway. The city was like a labyrinth of marble buildings and humble wooden shacks, in great contrast to the stunning ivory palaces of other nations. It was hard to believe that any monarch would choose this place for their nation's capital city, he thinks. The seaside climate gave the city a never-ending smell of salt and foam, a smell the man had grown to hate during his time in the winter kingdom of Arendelle. It was as if he were on a never-ending beach with a cobblestone shoreline that he just couldn't get away from, no matter how much he wanted to. Though, at this point, the odors of his horse seemed to mask the smell, and he couldn't decide which was worse.

He was headed for the port of Arendelle, a trade shipping route and a major source of the nation's naval strength. He had heard tell of a highly valued monarch of a far-off foreign land being deported on this night, and he wasn't just going to let such an opportunity escape him. He had his suspicions about who the monarch may be, but if his hunch of their identity was correct, it was possible that he was going to receive quite the bounty for their retrieval.

As he finally passed what must have been the hundredth street corner he had seen, he finally saw his destination in sight; there was no mistaking the port, as it had a massive amount of ships already docked there, awaiting the all-clear signal of the morning sun to launch off into foreign and domestic waters. It was a strangely beautiful sight, the man thought. Too bad that it would all have to be disrupted.

A lone guard stood watch in front of the dock of the port, standing vigilantly beside a wooden structure that didn't seem small enough to be a storage shack, nor large enough to be a station for passport checking and retrieval. It must, the man thought, be the prison where his monarch was being held. It, after all, had just enough room to move one's limbs around in a relatively comfortable position, and as he walked down the port, he saw the unmistakable sign of iron shackles on the interior. Though he could not see the prisoner inside, he knew he had found the location of his target.

"Halt!" The sharp cry of the guard broke through the silent night air and cut through it like a sharp knife would flesh. "Citizen, you do understand that midnight is the curfew in our city, correct?"

The man cleared his throat and prepared to speak.

"I do believe that is so, my friend." He said with a sharp Arendellian accent.

Ridiculous though it sounded in his mind, he seemed to have pulled it off convincingly enough.

"Then what, pray tell, are you doing out at such a time?" The guard's navy blue uniform seemed to absorb the very darkness of the sky itself, while the golden eagle on his navy cap seemed to reflect the moon's light. His rough voice spoke with a sense of authority, and the man wondered if he had just gotten in too deep with the wrong guard.

Nonsense, he thought. He was a professional at the task of getting himself out of bad situations.

"I have such a duty at the port that it cannot wait until morning, sir. I simply must attend to these matters at this time and at this time only." His chestnut brown hair blew along with the wind as he spoke these words, while his pale skin seemed at home in the moonlight. The black woolen jacket he wore concealed his torso, while black trousers and leather shoes covered the lower areas of his body. His hands were covered by black gloves and his eyes shined a fierce blue into the guard's own brown eyes.

"And what, pray tell, makes this duty so important that I should neglect the very basics of naval protocol to allow you to perform it?" The guard cocked an eye in suspicion while he tightly gripped the long, wooden musket he held by his side with his left hand. A silver bayonet glimmered off the end of the barrel in the moonlight, and it seemed sharp enough to cut through the wind itself with ease.

The man sighed a bit and placed one hand into his coat pocket, gripping a leather handle tightly inside.

"I was hoping for more cooperation from a man of the law." He said, all friendliness in his voice gone.

By this time, the guard had already raised his musket to be even with his lean stomach. It was obvious he had grown tense at the tone of the man's voice.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to exit the area at this very moment, lest I be forced to take you into custody."

The man sighed and pulled out a leather-handled knife from his coat pocket. Its golden blade reflected all manners of images as he stared intently at it. It looked to be a sharpened, rare blade, one of such significance that the guard had never even seen anything like it.

"I'm going to ask you once more, and only once more, for your full cooperation. Is that too much to ask of y-"

He couldn't complete his sentence, as the guard had raised the musket with his trembling hands to his face and had fired a shot at the man. Though the musket ball had only grazed his arm, it felt like a wildfire had shot across the damaged area, and he nearly doubled over in pain while shouting in rage like a hyena.

"My friend," he said in between painful gasps for breath. "That truly wasn't a good idea." He removed his hand from his bleeding arm and approached the guard with his golden knife swiftly, plunging the blade into the guard's stomach before he had even had a chance to react. The guard had approached the man, hoping to finish him off with his bayonet, but it had worked out in the favor of his opponent.

Seeing his enemy gasping for breath and in fatal pain, the man plunged the knife into the guard's heart, if only to end the guard's suffering. He kneeled down and searched the guard's pockets, finding a lone key. He hoped that this was the key to the wooden shack; he truly hoped he wasn't going to have to kick the door in and possibly injure his foot.

To his surprise, the key unlocked the door on his first attempt, and he finally got a good look at the interior of the structure. Wooden planks lined its walls, and a candle sat in the far right corner of the room, providing the only source of light for its occupant. There was a Bible laid across the ground, perhaps meant to be a source of entertainment (or rather of reform) to the room's only occupant. A man sat with his left arm shackled to the wall via chains, and he seemed to be sleeping in the middle of the room. How a man could sleep in such cramped conditions was beyond the intruder, but that was no longer what was the most important thing about the room.

He stared intently at the sleeping figure before him and realized that his hunch was correct. He knelt down onto the floor before letting an almost sick smile cross his face. He clutched the shoulder of the prisoner in front of him, shaking him vigorously in an attempt to wake him. Once the prisoner's eyes opened groggily, he felt he could no longer contain the words he felt obligated to say.

"It's wonderful to see you, Prince Hans." He said as he used the key to unlock the shackles that bound the monarch's arm. "Now come, we have a boat headed straight to the Southern Isles that awaits our arrival."


	2. Chapter 2

The crisp scent of autumn fills Anna's nose as the sunlight brings into full vision the multicolor forest around her. A tall blonde man with broad shoulders and pale skin that is wearing a light winter coat and a winter cap marches along beside her. The brown wool parka she is wearing seems to blend into the environment around her, while the fiery red of her hair and the pale white of her skin are in deep contrast to the beautiful forest. The true beginning of autumn has arrived, and what a chilly beginning it's been thus far.

"Have I ever told you just how much I hate this season?" Her companion, Kristoff, says to her. He says it with a tone of annoyance and wonders why he's even coming along with her in this cursed season of falling leaves.

"Can't say that you have." Anna replies. "So, what makes autumn so evil?" She's genuinely curious as to how another human being, especially one as close to her as Kristoff, couldn't enjoy such a beautiful season. Even the trees were breaking into color this time of year! Every season had its own beauty in Anna's eyes (except spring, spring was a time of annoying allergies and hideous yellow pollen that covered everything in sight) but the magnificence of autumn was unparalleled in her mind.

"It's the only season that just can't seem to make up its mind about what it wants to be." Kristoff says, huffing and puffing. He hadn't walked this much in a long time. The sheer thought of taking another step was becoming too much to bear for him.

"And how is that, oh Kristoffer, judge of all nature?" Anna says with a giggle.

"Well, for example," Kristoff begins. "Winter seems to pretty much have its stuff together. It wants to be cold, so it's cold, you know? Horrendously cold, with freezing lakes and ponds and what not."

This seems to make enough sense to Anna.

"Go on."

"Once winter leaves, spring knows exactly what it wants to be; annoying. So it's hot, but never hot enough to get you comfortable, and that stupid pollen is everywhere, and you can't stop sneezing, and your allergies don't go away…" Kristoff's speech on the evils of spring is interrupted as he trips over an exposed tree branch. Anna decides to lend him a hand and manages to pull him back to his feet.

"Looks to me like Mother Nature doesn't much appreciate you criticizing her work!" She says with a laugh. She rubs her hands along Kristoff's torso to get rid of the leaves and wood chips now stuck on his brown coat. Once he's clean and wood chip-free, she begins walking along the seemingly never-ending trail that carves through the forest once again.

"I guess not. But I don't see how ruining my perfectly good, perfectly expensive new coat solves anything." Kristoff says with a fake groan. He can't help but smile when Anna laughs at his blunder.

"So, back on the topic of seasons and why they're of the devil?" Anna says. "What happened with summer? Did summer abduct your family and eat your dog once or something?" She says sarcastically.

Kristoff scratches his head with his mitten-covered hand in a state of pondering.

"Come to think of it, I can't find too much wrong with summer. It's warm and cozy and the beach is open and all that. And my ice sells like hotcakes during summer."

"You're just ever the entrepreneur, aren't you?" Anna says with a friendly poke at Kristoff's arm. Branches smack Anna's parka over and over again with every step she takes, and she's sure the poor coat is ruined after her earlier fall in a bramble bush anyway.

"And finally, we come to autumn." Kristoff seems as if he's preparing for a big speech. "Autumn is either not hot enough to sell ice or not cold enough to make it, it's either too windy or too cloudy or the skies are too clear for it to rain too much, and it does everything in moderation."

"Whatever you say, Kristoff." Anna says, punching him slightly in the arm in revenge for daring to blaspheme against her favorite season.

"Can you remind me again why we're out here?" Kristoff asks.

Anna shrugs.

"Elsa said she had some big foreign diplomat coming over and she didn't want us intruding on any diplomacy discussions."

"That only happened one time though!" Kristoff exclaims.

"That's what I said!"

Kristoff sighs.

"It's not like anyone got hurt or anything. We just may have caused irreparable damage to our trade with Germany."

"Eh," Anna says with a smirk. "Who needs those Germans anyway? Not like they export chocolate or anything good."

"Very true," Kristoff says. "I hear their schnitzels are pretty good, though."

"I don't even know what a schnitzel is." Anna says.

"Some type of weird food they eat over there. I had it once when the trolls went rummaging through some garbage that someone dumped near their land."

Anna stops in her tracks and grabs Kristoff's arm. She pulls him back to her current position and stares him dead in the eyes.

"You mean to tell me that you ate _garbage_? Like, actual, literal, honest-to-goodness garbage?"

Kristoff smiles at her. Something had told him she would react like this.

"It was in a box! It hadn't even been opened." Kristoff rubs the back of his head. "Besides, I was young and curious with a lack of knowledge of foreign delicacies."

Anna sighs. A hatred of autumn and a taste for German garbage? She wondered what else she would fine out about Kristoff, and then decided that maybe she'd just rather not know.

* * *

Elsa sits in the diplomacy wing of the castle, feeling cold, and not just because she has a body temperature below what water freezes at. She meets the icy gaze of the diplomat in front of her, and he instantly reminds her of a lawyer. He seems to twist the truth to his point of view just about as often, and was obviously in his profession for the purpose of maximizing personal profit. The Southern Isles seemed to have diplomats that were just as annoying as their princes.

"We feel, your majesty, that Arendelle has not been courteous in respecting the interests of our fine nation." He says for what seems like the thousandth time. Elsa tugs at the ends of the formal black skirt she had been forced by her advisors to wear, and the collar of her cerulean top is making her neck itch quite fiercely. She wants nothing more to be out of this suit and this meeting both. "Are you listening to me, your majesty?"

"I'm listening quite well," Elsa says with an annoyed gaze in the diplomat's general direction. "It's just that I don't see much hope of relations between our nations in the near future."

The diplomat seems shocked and appalled by such a brash statement of words. His thin neck starts to sweat, and his balding comb over hairstyle moves out of place as he attempts to even get his words out.

"And why, my dear queen, might that be?"

_"This man must be a complete idiot," _Elsa thinks. It couldn't be all that hard to put two and two together as to why the kingdom of Arendelle, and Elsa in specifics, wanted no part of the Southern Isles. As far as she was concerned, the only isles to the south of Arendelle were those of the Dutch, a people that didn't seem to want to kill her all that often.

"In my mind, when the monarch of one nation attempts to have the monarch of another put to death, it doesn't do very much to help the relations between those two nations."

"I thought we agreed to a fresh start between Arendelle and the Southern Isles! A clean slate! A brand new opportunity!" The diplomat says, his comb over practically flapping about on his head as he shouts.

Elsa smiles at his incompetence and stands up, ready to end the meeting.

"Yes, a fresh start of peaceful ignorance between our two nations. We won't bother you, you won't bother us, and our problems will dissipate eventually."

"How dare you! The Southern Isles do not take lightly to such a statement, dear queen."

Elsa has already begun walking across the massive room and is heading towards the door. She turns around to get one last look at the diplomat before she leaves the room.

"Quite frankly, I don't care much at all about how the Southern Isles takes my decisions regarding my kingdom. Have a nice day."

"Wait!" The diplomat shouts, with an echo reverberating across the room. Elsa stops in her tracks and turns around, shocked that a man that had been a complete stranger only an hour ago had such nerve to yell at her like this.

"There has been an incident involving our nations very recently. I received a notice from the king of the Southern Isles himself directly before our meeting that Prince Hans, the glorious monarch of our nation that you held prisoner for months, has been captured while still in your port on the night of his departure from your nation."

Elsa is shocked. She has no words, but confusion abounds inside of her. How could Hans have been set free? How could an incident like this have happened? Surely the guards would have put a stop to this… But who had taken him, and why?

"The kingdom of the Southern Isles has every reason to believe there is a conspiracy between the Kingdom of Arendelle and foreign mercenaries involving the abduction of our prince. I, as a representative of my nation, demand his return, and the king has given me full authority to declare a state of emergency in my nation if his return has not occurred within three weeks' time."

"I have never heard of any such incident." Elsa adamantly states. "To declare my nation, my advisors, and myself of any such conspiracy is appalling, however. I have no idea how Hans was freed or who has taken him, but I assure you that they had no relations to the kingdom of Arendelle." It is difficult for her to remain in a calm, formal state while so many thoughts race through her head. Hans was supposed to have been deported from Arendelle and sent back to the Southern Isles to stand trial for his crimes last night. She had been given confirmation that he was at the port by her guards and no incident had ever been reported. How the king of the Southern Isles knew about this while she did not was a mystery, and a suspicious one at that.

"Even so, and it is my deepest regret to state this," the diplomat says, clearing his voice in an attempt to sound more serious. "If Prince Hans is not returned, there shall be no choice but for the Southern Isles to declare war on the Kingdom of Arendelle and all her provinces."


	3. Chapter 3

Everything seemed to be happening incredibly suddenly to Elsa. Just a few hours ago, she had been eagerly awaiting the end of a diplomacy meeting that had gone just about as well as she expected it to go, and now she was dealing with an escaped fugitive who just happened to be the active prince of another nation that was incredibly willing to start a war over his return (or lack thereof). She didn't think that a diplomacy meeting had ever gone this badly before. To make matters worse, her advisors were completely swamping her with questions, potential solutions, and false declarations and wouldn't let her stop to think over anything they were saying.

"Shall I ready our military?" One would ask, and before she could even ponder an answer to the question, another would shout, "Nonsense! We need only to isolate their foreign trade routes and their economy will crumble." Yet another would shout "How dare they accuse our glorious kingdom of such! We ought to give them something to accuse us of!" Eventually all of their brash statements and thoughtless words molded together like a bad verbal casserole in Elsa's mind. To make matters worse, Elsa still hadn't been given the privacy to get out of her ridiculously itchy diplomacy uniform or the precarious, annoying bun she was forced to put her hair in.

Suddenly and without any warning, the door to the advisement room opened gently. The incessant babbling of the advisors was (much to Elsa's relief) silenced, if only for a moment. Elsa wondered what bad news was coming next. Had Corona shut off their wine trade? Had the British declared war on the French once more and were asking for help in a needless war? Had the Southern Isles, by some miracle, instantaneously disappeared suddenly and without warning? Elsa smiled a bit as she thought of the last suggestion.

"Queen Elsa!" Shouted her pudgy, short butler by the name of Kai. His hair was in a mess and his uniform was wrinkled; he had obviously woken up fairly recently. She admired his dedication to his job; she doubted she'd be capable of throwing on a full outfit and delivering messages at such an early hour.

"I have a message for you," he continued, his voice echoing throughout the hollow room that contained only a table and some portraits of diplomats and royals from the time of her parents. "From Princess Anna."

Elsa groaned. She had sent Anna out of the castle for this very reason; she didn't need her sister intruding on matters of foreign affairs.

"I'm all ears, Kai." She said reluctantly. Even with the thought of Anna coming to make her diplomacy situation even worse, she was relieved to at least have some silence from her advisors.

"Princess Anna would like to know if your diplomacy session is on-going, and, if not, whether she can come in or not." The butler looked around the room at the dozen or so faces staring back at him. "Judging by the company present, I'm going to assume the session is over?"

"You can tell her that the train wreck is over Kai, yes." She looked around the round table at her advisors and shook her head. "Well, I think I've had enough advisement for one day. You all are free to go."

The advisors didn't seem particularly happy that their expert opinions on diplomacy were being discarded as they grumbled and walked out the door in a single file fashion. At this point, Elsa was too tired to care much about their opinions anyway. Tired of fake princes, tired of aggressive foreigners, and especially tired of itchy uniforms.

"I'll tell her you're on your way." Kai said, exiting the room as gently as he had entered it. Elsa got up from her uncomfortable wooden seat around the table and noticed that her gripped palm had left a small track of ice on the underside of the table. She sighed and lightly tapped the ice with her index finger, breaking it and allowing it to fall to the floor and melt. She didn't think she had been this stressed for ages. Stress. She didn't need to think of stress or anything that came with it. She was reminded of what stress did to her, and to the people around her. Perhaps it was best just to not get too emotional about things.

As soon she walked out of the advisement room, she felt something roughly collide into her torso. She stumbled back and leaned on the wall behind her for support as she felt her legs about to give away from the force. Once the pain in her chest had subsided, she looked down onto the floor to see her sister lying clumsily on her backside on the carpet.

"Ow!" Anna said with a sharp tone as she looked up. Once her gaze met her sister's, she let a smile replace the frown of pain she was wearing. "You know, you should really watch where you're going." She said in a sarcastic tone.

"Me?" Elsa replied. Anna's sense of humor seemed to be melting away the frown on her face, no matter how much she tried not to allow it to. "I think I was just opening a door. You were the one charging like an angry buffalo." She looked down at her sister who had still not forced herself off the carpet. Maybe it was more comfortable down there.

"You need a hand?" Elsa said, lowering her hand to Anna's waiting fingers. Her sister's fingers felt cold and filthy. As soon as her sister was back on her feet she removed her hand from Anna's as quickly as she could. "Where have you been to get your hands that dirty?" She asked, a look of slight disgust and slight curiosity coming over her face.

"Out in the woods, with Kristoff." Anna replied. "It's really pretty out there this time of year, you know. Maybe you ought to come out there with us once. To, you know… experience nature or something."

"I don't think I'll be experiencing much of anything besides constant advisement and stress for quite some time." Elsa said, allowing the frown she had worn inside the advisement room to come back over her face. She sighed and moved her eyes away from Anna's, trying to get the happy face of her sister out of her vision.

"What's got you bothered?" Anna asked. Her look of happiness was almost instantaneously replaced by a look of sympathy. "Is it something someone did? I can get Kristoff to go handle them if that's what happened, you know. He'll make them leave you alone." Her mind frantically jumped to different conclusions as Elsa raised her left hand in an attempt to calm her sister's thoughts.

"I don't think there's much Kristoff can do in this situation, Anna." She said. "It's just a diplomacy thing. Don't worry about it. Foreign relations."

"Elsa, if something's got you this down, I could really care less if it was foreign relations or not." Anna replied sympathetically. "Besides, as princess of the kingdom, I think it's some sort of crime to withhold critical information from me. This is critical information, right? And if it is, is that a real crime?" Her mind wandered.

"I don't know, Anna." She said, if only to get her sister to stop asking questions. She had heard enough questions for one lifetime. "It's just something to do with the diplomat that came to visit today. He didn't exactly bring happy news."

"You mean that Southern Isles guy?" Anna said, a look of contempt growing on her face. "You know I told you not to talk with him in the first place. Those people are nothing but trouble."

"I'm beginning to agree with you more and more, believe me." Elsa said. "But this is something that affects us as well as them, and, like it or not, we may have to cooperate with them if we don't want a conflict happening."

"What are you even talking about?" Anna asked, confused. "You know I don't keep up with these things like you do, Elsa. You're going to have to give me some background on this. Why is anyone talking about a conflict?"

Elsa bit her lip. She was hoping she wouldn't have to give her sister this tidbit of information.

"Hans was captured, or freed, or taken, whatever you want to call it by someone on the night he was supposed to be deported. Somehow the news reached the King of the Southern Isles before me despite the fact that it happened in our port, and part of me wants to believe that they're in on it, if only due to that fact." Elsa said. It felt good to get this off of her chest. Better than she had expected. But next came the fear of Anna's reaction.

"What?!" Anna shouted. Her angry shout filled the halls with an echo and Elsa was certain she saw a guard or two turn their head to the source of the noise.

"Anna, please, calm down…"

"No! Okay? I will not calm down!" She was still speaking in an angry tone, but she was quiet now, which frightened Elsa slightly more than when she was loud. "This man tried to kill us both and take over our kingdom, Elsa. And you mean to tell me to stay calm when he's been set free by some guy we don't even know the identity of?"

"Anna, for all we know, he could have been captured and killed."

"That certainly seems like the best case scenario to me, but best case scenarios don't seem to work out very well for us."

"Anna, there is no best case scenario here. The king has stated that if Hans isn't returned within three weeks' time, there will be a war between Arendelle and the Southern Isles. If anything, we need Hans to be alive and safe." Anna's anger was bringing back the stress of the advisement session all over again.

Anna's face grew even paler than it usually was.

"So you mean to tell me that we have an escaped murderer-prince who tried to take over the throne of our kingdom on the loose and a potential war on our hands if we don't find him and protect him?"

"When you say it that way it just sounds ridiculous." Elsa replied.

"That's because it's completely ridiculous!" Anna shouted once more. "Nobody else has to deal with these types of things. Sometimes I wish we were just common people like everyone else."

"Anna, I don't think we can ever be common people." Elsa said. She had formed a snowball in her hands that she was tossing around to avoid having to stare up at her sister's angry gaze. The snowball itself only seemed to further drive her point that they weren't normal.

"Well, that just means we have to think of uncommon solutions to uncommon problems, I guess." Anna said, trying to calm herself down.

"That's a better way of putting it."

"So, would it be wrong of me to tell Kristoff about this?" Anna asked. Withholding information of this magnitude from him would feel wrong.

"Yes, it would be very wrong." Elsa said. "No one can hear about this until we've had time to think it over. We need this problem to stay between, you, the advisors, and me. Some of the people are already upset enough about having a woman that can shoot ice from her hands like some sort of sorcerer for a queen. We don't need the entire population in a frenzy."

"I think I understand." Anna said awkwardly. "But that doesn't mean I like it."

"Just remember," Elsa said firmly. "Uncommon solutions to uncommon problems." She scratched her arm where the fabric was being particularly itchy and decided that she couldn't bear having this outfit on any longer.

"If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go get rid of this ridiculous costume." Elsa said.

"You're excused." Anna said with a small laugh.

As Elsa turned the corner down the seemingly endless hallway, she sighed. Laughter. She wished she could remember how to really feel laughter.

* * *

The rocking of the sea gently swayed the small boat back on forth across its waves. The sun beat down on Hans' exposed forehead, and he suddenly wondered why he wasn't shackled to a wooden wall.

"Ay, I see ya finally awake over there?" Said a man with a thick Irish accent. "They must'a had you on quite the medication! Ya've been out for three days straight!" Hans was still groggy from his deep sleep, but the surprise of hearing another human's voice broke his trance. His head shot up and instantly collided with a wooden post, forcing him back down onto the rather comfortable bed he had been sleeping in, wincing in pain.

"Careful now, don't want to crack your skull there," The man said, chuckling at the young prince's blunder. "I know you got a 'ard head and all, but that can't be good for ya."

"Who… who are you?" Hans asked, still rubbing his forehead. "Where am I? What is this place?"

"I think I'll just answer those questions one at a time," the man said in a soft-spoken tone. "My name, Prince Hans, is Gearalt." The man scratched his head and walked back up to the upper deck of the boat and scanned the general area before coming back down to the captain's quarters that he had laid Hans in. "Now, I'm rather not sure about this one, but it looks like we might just be on a body of water." He laughed a hearty laugh and slapped his knee at his joke. He was an older man with a white beard that covered his jawline and cheeks and stopped directly below his nose. His hair was grey, but it seemed to be grey from experience rather than age. He was wearing some form of a fisherman's outfit that he had no doubt found on the lower deck. Hans didn't seem very amused by the joke.

"Alright, can't take a joke. We're up near the middle of the Arendellian Sea. I assume ya've got a basic knowledge of geography, so I'll just let ya determine where ya think that might be. As for this place, well, this place is a boat I stole from the Port of Arendelle when I broke you out of that God-forsaken prison. You can thank me any time you want."

"I demand to be returned to the Southern Isles at once!" Hans shouted. "Trust me when I say that there will be severe consequences for your lack of cooperation in this matter!" His attempts at intimidation weren't working on Gearalt, whose face turned into a scowl rather quickly. Gearalt quickly moved over to the bed that Hans was sitting on and grabbed the young prince by the collar of his dark grey prisoner's outfit.

"I am a very dangerous man, your majesty, and sometimes I can't control my temper. I'd advise ya to stop pushing my buttons, because I can all but guarantee I'm the only one on this boat that knows how to get you back to the Southern Isles without an arrest warrant on your head." His formerly friendly voice turned into a deep, menacing growl as he spoke to Hans. Gearalt, quite sure he had made his point, let go of Hans' collar and let the young man fall back down onto the bed.

"Well, mister Grabalt," Hans spoke.

"Gearalt."

"Whatever your name is, I'd just like to point out that I likely wouldn't have an arrest warrant on my head if you hadn't kidnapped me."

Gearalt seemed to ponder this for a moment before reaching a conclusion.

"They really must not have told you anything boy, did they?" He said with a cackle.

"What do you mean? Who is they?" Hans' eyes were beginning to twitch in frustration with this older, obviously senile man. He couldn't get any relevant information out of him and he was hoping with every word he spoke that he wouldn't set off Gearalt's temper once more. He rubbed his temples in frustration and was disgusted by the grime that appeared on his hands after he was finished. Only then did he remember that, during the entire two months he had been stuck in an Arendellian prison, he had never once been allowed to bathe. Even still, he was sure he smelled better than Gearalt, whose odor Hans could only compare to a pile of dead fish wrapped in sulfur.

"So you mean to tell me they withheld info from you, but they thought that I was a trustworthy old man to tell it to? You Southern Isles men are dumber than you look, and that's quite a feat what with those sideburns that seem to be ever so popular down there. I'm sure they had their reasons, no matter how stupid, for not tellin' ya." Gearalt said. "In other words, you won't be getting anything out of me, laddie."

"You do realize that to lie to the monarch is a serious crime, correct?"

"Brother, do I sound like I'm from the Southern Isles to you? I'm a mercenary! I work for who pays, and right now, someone is payin' me to get you out of that there country." He pointed in the general direction he thought Arendelle was located in. "Besides, it's not like your authority means much when I'm the only man with a weapon on board." He drew out the leather knife he had plunged into the heart of a guard only nights before and let the sun gleam off its golden blade. Hans gulped.

"I think I understand." Hans said.

"Well then, it sounds like you and I will just get along swimmingly." Gearalt put the knife right back into the pocket it came from and he let a smile cross his face once more. This man, Hans thought, was completely insane.

"If you don't mind my asking," Hans said. "Who exactly was the one who sent you here to get me?"

"I suppose a tidbit of divulging couldn't hurt," Gearalt said after scratching his head. "It was your old father, King of the Southern Isles. Looks like he wanted his boy back from an outside source instead of those Arendellians, eh?"

Hans felt a wave of relief come over him.

"So you're going to deliver me back to my father."

"Basically, yes, that's how I hope it goes."

"Did he ever explain why he wanted you to take me instead of just allowing the Arendellians deport me?"

Gearalt allowed a hearty chuckle to flow through his body once more.

"You really don't know your old man that well, do ye?" He said. "All I know is that he didn't want to waste an opportunity for a perfectly good war with his neighbors to the north."

Suddenly Hans began to feel dizzy, more than likely from the blow to the head he had suffered. But somehow he couldn't help but think, as he blacked out, this new piece of information was probably a factor as well.


End file.
